The Oct. 12 edition of the Santa Fe Reporter profiles Kenny Ausubel, the co-CEO and founder of local nonprofit Bioneers. This organization looks to nature for solutions to the world's most pressing social and economic problems.
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As the 22nd annual Bioneers conference commences this weekend (Oct. 14-16) in San Rafael, California, Ausubel believes that "the next six or seven years are probably the most important years of human civilization." He asserts that significant changes in the Earth's climate, the natural world, American and international politics and the global economy may indicate a fundamental change in human perception.
The need for this fundamental change of perception was masterfully articulated over sixty years ago, with the publication of A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Along with Thoreau's Walden (1854) and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), this 1949 classic defines a mystical relationship between humanity and the natural world that Ausubel and the Bioneers look to preserve.
A Sand County Almanac opens with Leopold asserting that modern society (of the late 1940s) espoused an Abrahamic concept of the land: "We believe land is a commodity which belongs to us, rather than viewing land as a community to which we belong, love and respect." Gathering sketches of nature mostly from the sandy soils of his native Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold takes the reader on a sublime and mystical tour. A rough-legged hawk kills a mouse during a January thaw; a Phi Beta Kappa fails to hear the Canadian geese migrate (two times per year) over her well-insulated house; solitude permeates an island lake; a mountain peak appears through clouds; a spring flood isolates an impenetrable marsh; a hungry trout takes a fly; a human sits by a fire before dawn, listening to the call of a quail; a jaguar is present in a forest. Leopold attempts to describe the indescribable, the immeasurable spiritual force identified with nature. This "numenon" or holiness is the opposite of "phenomenon," measurable and predictable movements of nature "like the tossings and turnings of the remotest star."
Rapid changes in the 20th century, according to Leopold, have dissociated humanity from the land. He observes that humans "are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution," that there is a complex interrelationship between all levels of nature where man has a niche. Maybe this is why the harshest contemporary abusers of land, the most Abrahamic of our modern age, refuse to even acknowledge Darwin's Theory of Evolution? Without belief in interconnectedness of nature, the conscious is free to own it, manipulate it, abuse it and claim full comprehension of how it works.
Leopold asserts that the process of "growing up" in a modern world corresponds directly to dissociation with the land: "Experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living." Our association with nature is increasingly reduced to "trophies" as we get older—nature photographs, fish in a creel, signing the register at the top of a mountain peek. Yet a bigger, more important spiritual awareness slips in with these limited nature interactions, a glimpse of the real "real world."
A deeper understanding of human interconnection with nature begins with "sportsmanship." Here, a hunter or fisherman voluntarily restrains himself/herself from the use of technological advantages for ethical reasons. With every fish not taken or unnecessary shot not fired, a respect for nature's interrelationship grows. Rodents burrowing the soil become essential to tree growth, which in turn becomes essential to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. An ethical line is drawn to limit or eliminate interference and preserve the natural order. Love, respect and admiration generate an ethical obligation to the land. In A Sand County Almanac, Leopold writes that humans must develop an "ecological ethic," a limitation of freedom to maintain our own existence. We can't just do what we want to the environment or it will soon implode. This ecological ethic requires cooperation, execution of the Golden Rule, and doing what is profitable for a global community, not just select individuals.
Hopefully, the leadership of Ausubel and the actions of those attending the Bioneers conference this weekend, along with Occupy Wall Street protesters and readers of A Sand County Almanac, will continue a fundamental change in human perception toward the land.
Lee Miller is the author of the Bengali novel, Kali Sunset (www.clovercreekpress.com), the story of Mrs. Sona Choudhury's spiritual journey in 20th Century India.
